Three Years Ago Today...

As some of you may have noticed, I've been pretty slow to post here as of late. Not for lack of trying, I assure you. I've got two longer, more dense pieces I've been working on, and am in the process of applying to the Path of Engagement program out in California. I'm also absolutely slammed with paid and non-paid work right now, which doesn't offer much in the way of the sort of free time one needs to write in any meaningful way.

However, recent events in Gaza, namely the Israeli shelling of of a home killing some 18 sleeping civilians, and the US veto of the UN Security Council resolution denouncing it, saw me going back to the journal I kept during my time in the Occupied Territories. Reading it over, I almost feel like I've somehow grown intellectually and spiritually dulled since. It highlighted questions I seem to have forgotten, and cast a different light on things I've grappled with more recently (especially in my spiritual life).

So, I've created a separate blog, where (for the next few weeks) I'll be posting the entries from that journal. Hopefully, they'll offer some of you something; not necessarily in terms of insight about the Occupation (much has changed in three years), or the politics of solidarity or whathaveyou... But perhaps in the way of what it means to be present in this life, what it means to be still enough to observe exactly what we don't know; what's at stake in our relationship to suffering, perhaps.

Joshua in Palestine (2003)

Taking Refuge, Pt. 2

I had such a tremendously shitty afternoon; I've been so slammed with work-related tasks for the last month, and between unforeseen technical glitches, and my own inability to acknowledge when I've over-committed myself... I'm fucking up, left and right. And it's embarrassing, and it hurts, and while it prevents me from really being present, it also metastasizes into a sort of paralysis (which just makes everything worse). And in turn I have to fight even harder to catch up. It feels like it never stops.

And tonight, I had the opportunity to listen to a friend talk about how she's considering checking herself into a hospital for clinical depression; how she catches herself sabotaging her relationship with her partner, how she can't understand it, and can't forgive herself for it. Ultimately, how helpless she feels, and how sick she is of having it dismissed by friends as mere "stress." I feel like I'm the worst person ever, she said.

Nearly six years ago, at the outset of what would turn out to be one of the worst periods of my life, I turned back to the Dharma practice in which I'd dabbled since I was about 15, but I wasn't prepared or ready for the real work of it. I sat in my livingroom, and began a Metta (lovingkindness) meditation, aware as I was of my steadily escalating anger and lack of forgiveness for certain people and events in my recent life (a fact that was beginning to swallow me alive, and would continue to for a few years). Most Metta practices involve quietly offering compassion to various people, usually beginning with oneself and as one becomes comfortable, moving outward to people further and further removed from oneself. It's a practice, it's not like hitting an inhaler to diffuse the onset of an asthma attack. But I didn't care. I just wanted to stop being angry, I wanted to stop being swallowed whole.

Within just a few minutes of working with that meditation, I was sobbing. I'd discovered that merely quietly offering myself the hope of being happy, being free from fear, being free from harm... I discovered that in some really deep, hardened place, I didn't believe I deserved it. And I was crushed by the feeling of being unmasked as that liar, that person that hated himself so thoroughly. I quickly abandoned the entire practice, and wound up opting instead for dialectic of sleep and eating disorders and an utter refusal to allow myself to uncover that self-hatred again. Six months later I was 35lbs thinner, hypo-glycemic, had doubled my cumulative count of sexual partners, and quit a job of four years to move to the other side of the country.

Then I read Audre Lorde's, The Cancer Journals, in which she wrote of her own struggle:

I must let this pain flow through me and pass on. If I resist or try to stop it, it will detonate inside me, splatter my pieces against every wall and person that I touch.

Tonight, I was able to listen, and offer a few suggestions for how to think about that pain, how to offer it compassion and know that it need not swallow us whole. How it merely needs us to acknowledge that it's happening, and not try to shove it out the door or hide it or compensate for it or externalize it (or our reaction to it). Or, in the case of my friend, to "fix" it.

In the Suttas that temptation to distraction and control is personified as Mara (illusion), and during his enlightenment the historical Buddha never made attempts to repress or or otherwise manhandle Mara. He simply said, "I see you." What was fascinating about tonight was not that what I understood (intellectually) about my practice was arguably helpful to someone else. In fact, I wasn't even terribly sure that was on the table. Rather, in attempting to offer that attentive, compassionate presence to her, I was able to realize how ridiculous my attitude toward myself has been all day. I emerged from the conversation audibly chuckling to myself: "I see you, Mara. Hang out as long as you like."

Goodnight.

"They could be fascist anarchists and it still wouldn't change the fact that I don't own a car."

You scored as Anarchism. <'Imunimaginative's Deviantart Page'> Socialist 100% Anarchism 100% Communism 83% Democrat 83% Green 67% Fascism 33% Nazi 0% Republican 0% What Political Party Do Your Beliefs Put You In? created with QuizFarm.com

You were wrong when you said everything's going to be alright.

I woke up this morning, decided today was the day. I'd remember to live a bit, to do a bit more than breathe; but not too far in. Those butterflies interject, and remind me that this is unfamiliar ground. - Endeavor

Yes, yes. I know. It's been a month (nearly). After Jeff's passing, I opted to take a few moments to shut the fuck up and reflect a bit; maybe let someone else do the talking for a while. A few moments became a few weeks, which bled into my inevitable return to Vermont, which bled into my final days there, which bled into my return home, which has seen nearly two weeks pass into a blur of rain and work demands stacked against a rather casual (but nonetheless heartening) romantic affair stacked against a not-so-casual but thus far vicarious attraction stacked against an impending birthday stacked against fuckhead insurance companies stacked against playing air drums to Cobolt's Great American Lies stacked against that spasm in the morning shower when your body decides to inform you that it's not ready to function (even after eleven hours of sleep).

I'm going to go ahead and blame coffee.

And truth be told, I'm not terribly convinced that there's much to relay, beyond what was substantive for me; hardly a yardstick for what anyone's interested in reading, here. But as I wrote to someone the day I left Vermont to come home, I have, in fact, come to a place where I can do a bit more than breathe. That is, I've located some flash of coherence in what it is that I do on a day to day basis. There's a life buried somewhere in there, and by that I mean something demonstrable; something that can be built upon and elaborated. Something beyond what I engage in to avoid making eye contact with my own dislocation.

It peeked out in the most unlikely places. On the corner of 16th and S, when she spun around, pulled me by my hips and kissed me as though I were hers, in front of every passing car; the moment my hands left her hips, and the realization that the world was still conspicuously intact. Or during the Anzaldua session at RAT, speculating that perhaps infusing our work with the erotic means embracing and honoring the same vulnerability that we bring to sexual encounters. Or hauling the sandwich-board from Black Sheep out to State & Elm mornings, savoring the anonymity, noticing the ways my feet would fall differently from the tensing and slacking of muscle in my arms. Or reaching that point with someone where I realize nothing I would want to say to them would be wrong.

Or maybe just coming home to the knowledge that I've been living with one hand tied behind my back... and being a little embarrassed about it. I woke up a year older today. And the world is still conspicuously intact. Go figure.

Jeff Mendez, 1972 - 2006

Brother, I fear we would've never had enough time. I'd just begun to settle into the life that found us crossing paths with regularity, and barely got to glimpse into all I had to learn from you. Some other time, perhaps.

It is with profound sadness and grief that the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation learned yesterday of the passing of Jeff Mendez, a former Steering Committee member of the US Campaign. Jeff was instrumental in organizing the US Campaign’s 2nd and 3rd Annual National Organizers’ Conference in Washington, DC in 2003 and 2004. Jeff resigned his position on the Steering Committee after he was first diagnosed with a rare form of Leukemia in 2004.

Mark Lance, Steering Committee Chair of the US Campaign stated: “Jeff Mendez was a comrade in both senses of the word. He was a colleague in struggle and a beloved friend. Jeff was brilliant, tireless, insightful, loving, and hilarious. Though we tended to meet up, as he once put it, ‘on the atrocity circuit,’ life was good when hanging with Jeff. I honestly can't remember ever failing to have fun. Being with Jeff reminded me of why we care, why we bother to struggle against injustice. Because however much evil humans are capable of, they retain as well the possibilities of creativity and beauty. Working with Jeff and people like him, one sees glimpses of another world waiting for us to create it.

Jeff was both one of the best, and at the same time one of the nicest people I had the honor to know in my life. I will carry his memory with me all my days.”

The US Campaign would like to extend its deepest sympathies to Jeff’s family and his wide circle of friends and colleagues. In Jeff’s honor, we plan to uphold his life’s work by continuing our advocacy for human rights, justice, and dignity for all human beings.

Below is an obituary and details of a public memorial service that will take place tomorrow, Tuesday, September 12 at the Palestine Center in Washington, DC.


Jeffrey Librado Méndez, 33, died on Sept. 10 after a sudden relapse of Leukemia. He was surrounded by his friends and family.

Méndez was born on Dec. 5, 1972 in Cuero, TX where he grew up and graduated high school. He received his Bachelors and Masters of Arts degrees from Baylor University in Waco, TX. A Rhodes Scholar, he was enrolled in a PhD program in Political Studies and Gender at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa. He also spent time in Germany as an exchange student.

Méndez was a dedicated seeker of social justice, and he was particularly committed to struggles for Immigrant, Gay and Palestinian rights. This commitment led him to work as a Program Manager at the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations and at the Jerusalem Fund for Education and Community Development/Palestine Center, where he served as acting Executive Director and Humanitarian and Development Director thereafter. Jerusalem Fund founder and noted Palestinian scholar-intellectual Dr. Hisham Sharabi considered him a son. Méndez had recently resigned from the Jerusalem Fund to be Development Director at the national office of the international Catholic peace organization Pax Christi.

Méndez founded the Africa Fund for Emergency Relief, an organization operating in Lesotho, South Africa and Swaziland to serve the needs of HIV-positive orphans, and was active with the Latino Advocacy and Action Council, the National Minority Bone Marrow Foundation, the Leukemia Lymphoma Society of Washington, D.C., the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, the Edden Group for Social Justice, the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, the Coalition for Justice and Accountability, Our Lady of Lebanon Maronite Church, and was an advisor to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).

Jeff was a source of love and strength for all who knew him. His always present smile and laughter will remain in our hearts forever. He will be brought home to Cuero where he will rest near the family home. Jeff is survived by his parents Librado and Cecilia; sisters Sandra and Nancy; brother Ron; nieces Crystal and Elena; and nephews Robert, Dustin, Kevin and Jacob.



Please remember me. Fondly.
I heard from someone you're still pretty.
And then, they went on to say that the Pearly Gates
Have some eloquent graffiti.
Like, "We'll meet again."
And, "Fuck the Man."
And, "Tell my mother not to worry."
And angels, with their great handshakes
Always done in such a hurry.
- Iron & Wine

What life gets in the way of...

There's an old Steven Wright joke that goes: The other day, I was walking through the woods, and a tree fell right in front of me... And I didn't hear it.. If you've ever heard the man speak, you know why this is funny. Even funnier, I outdid him.

Yesterday, I was walking in downtown Montreal, and a plane landed in the middle of the street, just half a block behind me... And I didn't hear it. No shit.

The day kicked off not unlike any other of my Sundays: Late breakfast, coffee. Meagan and I had walked down to what's referred to as Tam Tam; a weekly drum circle of sorts. The weather was having a bit of trouble making up its mind. After a few hours of throwing my hoodie back on every time the sun ducked behind a cloud, I suggested we make our way back east on Mont-Royal, offering to cook dinner and give her time to catch up on schoolwork. It was a quick affair: Tomato-basil penne with mock chicken. About the time I was finishing up eating, my phone began buzzing and sliding around the table. It was a 202 number.

The body of Jeff Mendez was moved from George Washington University Hospital less than twenty-four hours ago. Roughly a week prior, his Leukemia reappeared, and his doctors had him undergo chemotherapy immediately; compromising his immune system, allowing an infection to rip through his body like a flash flood. By the time I'd picked up the phone, he'd been unconscious for three days, and his family had gathered with friends to remove his life support. I had no idea he'd ever been sick. I spent the final hour of his life overcome by the urge to call him, buttressed by the knowledge he'd never hear it. Ever.

I've been on a train from Montreal for the last eleven hours, with another four to go. Around 1:30am, I'll make my way out of Union Station, walk the three blocks east to Stanton Park, then another four south to a client's house where Seager is dogsitting. I'll (hopefully) sleep a few hours, walk to Murky, find my way home, say hi to the cats, shower, and head out with Lance to the five hour memorial at the Palestine Center.

Later in the week, I'll borrow money from a friend to cover the train, and slip back across the border as though it were all just a bad dream, until I can make sense of a world in which Jeff Mendez is not alive.

I'm not in this movie, I'm not in this song.

Montreal boasts an all-vegan Thai joint that, were it not for its stroke-inducing prices, would easily put Seattle's Araya to shame. Specializing in mock meats, they do an absolutely stellar job at replicating traditional, authentic Thai dishes that steer clear of being overly-fatty and greasy (a nice change of pace in terms of Asian food). Of course, what the food offers in the way of health is just as quickly cancelled out by what one's body suffers upon gandering at the bill. Jesus.

I met Helen a year ago at Renewing the Anarchist Tradition, where she gave a talk on growing older within movements, and considerations for building communities that both enable and support that project. It turned out to be one of the talks I most appreciated, and it spurred several hours of subsequent conversations with other attendees. Having cut my teeth with anarchism in the District, where youth is the discursive boundary that circumscribes what passes for self-idenitified anarchist politics, it was almost surreal hearing folks even have such conversations at an explicitly anarchist gathering, much less conversations that did not hinge on reaffirming one's loyalty to a specific set of aesthetics.

When my body dragged me across that frontier (admittedly, with an albeit clumsy willingness on my part), I took up spiritual residence among those I'd worked with around Palestine; a rabble of vibrantly diverse constitution (especially in age), far less inclined to police each other's lifestyles or force each other's increasingly square bodies through the round hole of perpetual adolescence. Certainly, there was a liberatory quality to that. But there were also moments in which I felt the chasm between myself and my own reconstructive vision inching wider; to the point that when several local infoshop characters were facing potential legal troubles over something typically stupid and irrelevant, I openly contested any obligation to them, dismissing the contention that they were somehow "my people" as fully lacking in evidence or coherence.

Being in Montreal, it seemed simply given that I'd catch up with IAS folks where possible, and despite our mutual scheduling conflicts, Helen was insistent that we at least grab dinner Friday night. I'd holed up in a cafe on Mont-Royal most of the day, futilely attempting to export an IAS database query that seemed to have been corrupted in a few recent updates. But by 7:30pm, I'd given up and we were strolling down Saint-Denis toward ChuChai. On the way, it struck me that I didn't really know her well. Beyond her presentation a year ago, the only time I'd spent with her was in the IAS board meeting in Boston, where I don't even recall us talking outside of the meeting itself. My subconscious kinda peeked out, reminding me that her nursing student schedule wasn't likely to afford time beyond dinner, a block I could easily fill up with banter specific to our work.

Helen had other ideas. Between dinner and the first fifteen minutes of the following day, we must've walked nearly the entire eastern half of the city, not to mention climbing the mountain at the center (in the dark), and finding our way back down. I don't recall any particular gaps in our conversation. What's more, I felt challenged in much of it; in both reflections on adjusting to dramatic disjunctures in day to day life, and reflections on the reincription of colonialist discourses undergirding certain threads of "queer" solidarity in Iran. Oddly enough, a certain part of me felt like an impostor at times, though mostly in that "Hold on a sec, I need to pinch myself real quick" sort of way.

Ultimately, I caught myself (here and there) giving way to the idea that it is, in fact, possible for me to be this person I wake up to each day; that there's hope he might begin to make some sort of sense in the reasonably near future.

I'm a city boy. Who knew?

While the charm of Montpelier is ample, given its status as the capitol of a state overrun by people sporting bumper stickers reading Vermont: Most Likely to Secede and US out of VT (see Second Vermont Republic), and the manner in which even the most apolitical Joe Schmoe is disdainful of even modest departures from face to face direct democracy... It's still little more than a small town. And after a month comprised largely of coffee, Nietzsche, instant-message marathons, The Shield, and low-brow cold sesame noodles... I've smuggled myself across our border with our younger, smarter cousin; landing in Montreal just in time to catch A Silver Mt. Zion's final tour date (which was nothing short of jaw-dropping).

There's an irony in my long journey to Canada: Until about 6pm EST yesterday, I'd spilled across the Western Hemisphere (not to mention a brief residency in the Middle East), without so much as ever setting foot in either of the countries bordering that of my origin. And I suppose it makes it that much better that my sleepless urban withdrawal is momentarily colliding with the European motif of my adolescent years, to the tune of utter elation. Languages melt into each other in mid-sentence, hemmed between structures half-Brooklyn/half-any-European City (take your pick); the character of the communities inhabiting them evident in ways that give the lie to the meanings my country has invested in "democracy." Less than twenty-four hours down, and I'm already dying for someone to tell me there's a dogwalking market here.

On the Metro last night, transferring from the Green to the Orange Line, I made my way over to a somewhat crowded bench. Preparing to unclip by messenger bag, I set down the copy of Jean-Francois Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition that I'd been reading since we set off from Montpelier. The guy sitting in the adjacent spot immediately picked it up, looked the cover over, and shot me an approving nod. I'm not sure why, but that sort of interaction registers with me as rare, to say the least (especially in the US); perhaps in part because we've grown resigned to a certain flavor of alienation, and in part because the range of ideas that enjoy that sort of broad currency in the US is shamefully narrow.

None of which is to romanticize my current surroundings as somehow utopian; given the work of a number of people dear to me, I know well exactly what (we'll say) imperfections lurk (and loom large) here. But it's a fairly jarring reminder that we can do better on our side of the border.

Right Guard will not help you here...

DC people, get your asses out to this. Seriously, the 92 bus stops about 4 times on 18th street (including a stop right across from Asylum). No excuses.

Rally at the Anacostia Public Library
Thursday, August 31, 2006
5:00pm to 7:30pm


Did you know that the Anacostia Library has been
shuttered since December 2004? Did you realize that
the Mayor and the City Council have never found it a
priority to make sure interim services are in place to
continue to serve the needs of this neighborhood?
Does this make you angry because you recognize the
important role libraries can play in a community?

TWO YEARS IS TOO LONG!!

Come on out to rally for the immediate reopening of
Anacostia Library and bring your friends and
children...

* Keynote speakers

* Children's activities and reading-time

* Food and beverages will be served

* Open mic for ALL - step up to the podium and speak!


WHERE:
Anacostia Public Library
1800 Good Hope Road, SE (18th & Good Hope)
(the 92 bus stops directly in front of the library)

WHEN:
Thursday, August, 31, 5:00 to 7:30pm

**

VOLUNTEER
We are looking for organizing assistance as well. Can
you help spread the word by email, flyer? Can you help
read books to kids or do you have a car? Contact >>
Robin Diener, 202-387-8030,
rdiener@savedclibraries.org

Between the Ones and Zeros

From Overheard in New York:

Girl #1: Anarchists are so dumb.
Girl #2: Yeah, totally.
Girl #1: I mean, just 'cause you hate the government doesn't mean you have to dress badly.

--Williamsburg

The word for today, kids, is impermanence.

As pertains this author, its significance is not so much (at the moment) anchored to physical, material phenomena. Instead, it figures in the arising and passing of thoughts, concepts, emotions, perceptions, and desires.

The Dharma has traditionally described it in terms of the fluid coming and going of the mind; the distraction, continual return from which constitutes the art of meditation. It is the quality of phenomena for which there is no stable agent or source, and the coming and going that characterize it are inevitable whether we hasten them or not.

It's also precisely what Derrida was describing in his assertion that language is not primarily communicative, but representative; in that the majority of our application of lanugage occurs in the form of internal monologue (in thought), where we are simply representing already known information to ourselves (in perhaps new ways). Given that language is an externally crafted and imposed set of constraints with enormous productive capacity in and of itself, its potential to speak through us and surreptitiously mold representations in which we fancy ourselves the sole author is likely impossible to entirely quantify (See also Foucault's What is an Author?). That being the case, the meanings we invest in representations that may never even be uttered are by their very nature instable, fluid, and impermanent. They will arise and pass without us so much as breathing.

Which seems to leave communication rather loaded. By communication, I mean the transmission of new or novel information from one point to another (say... from one person to another). What happens when we make those passing little flashes of emotion, intuition, perception, and desire audibly manifest? Foucault had a few ideas about this, as well -- some of which seem to illustrate the ways in which that practice invests otherwise essentially impermanent and instable phenomena with an artificial stability or lasting meaning; wedding and thus investing the speaker with said meanings, instability notwithstanding... Investing the speaker with an assumed responsibility for the durability of said meanings (a daunting and futile charge, to be sure).

Impermanence, as it interests me at the moment, is the precise description of what I've always found so volatile about communication (again, I'm invoking a specific definition, here). Since my adolescence, I've been utterly terrified of assuming that aforementioned responsibility, and given the rather physical and material demonstrations of impermanence that have characterized recent years of my life, my aversion to giving audible words to what I think I know has only increased. Thus, I find myself more and more inhabiting ambiguities, honoring the instability of my own thoughts, emotions, intuitions, perceptions and desires.

Quantitatively, their specific representations will pass, and there's certainly some refuge to be found in that. Qualitatively... The jury's still out, and it's not clear they're ever going to return a verdict. The passing of something may be no more than its evolution, growth, and bloom. It need not be merely be as simple or narrow as entropy. The change, the becoming that constitutes impermanence can hold enormous promise.

So, in waiting out the swirling storm of impermanence, in waiting for the passing of (specifically) one's desires (and the perceptions that undergird them), at what point does one cease to live? By that I mean, in refusing that responsibility for the durability of my intuitions, emotions, desires; in refusing to even give them words or sound... At what point does that awareness of impermanence merely become a form of self-imposed paralysis? Exactly where does one locate the border between a measured and thoughtful practice of observation, and merely being too cowardly to roll the dice?

I'm fairly sure you're reading this, and I'm fairly sure you know who you are. Thanks for routinely making me smile, for (perhaps unwittingly) making me a bit more at ease with myself over the last few months. If I leave it at that, it's not out of fear of the impermanence of my own desires, but rather a desire to honor and respect the impermanence of yours.

At least I hope so.

"Re-interpreting" apartheid

This made me throw up in my mouth, a little.

Oh, and by the way, if anyone's interested in taking me to see Built to Spill at the 9:30 when I get back, it's just days before I enter the final year of my 20's. Jess Hall, I'm looking in your direction.

Over and out.

Murray Bookchin, 1921-2006

Murray,

I'm honestly at a bit of a loss as to what to say, here. Our interactions were few, and left me feeling as though you'd resigned yourself to whittling away the last of your years as a bitter old curmudgeon. It always put me in an odd position; you were so preoccupied with establishing your legacy that you probably never knew that you'd blown my mind years before.

I stand by my position from our last argument, by the way. Whatever brought about your disillusionment, anarchism is not antithetical to organization, and I'm honestly still a little embarrassed that (having written all you had) you couldn't do better than parroting the most cliche caricature in the book. Rumor has it that, in your final book, you went through all the adjectives you'd used in The Spanish Anarchists, and replaced them with the worst insults you could think up. Well done, I guess.

Hopefully, your legacy will reflect your less bitter moments. Either way, there really isn't anyone stepping up to fill your shoes.

Last summer, I said my final goodbye to the Institute. It was really fucking hard. A school house where I'd studied under some of the most insightful, understated people I've ever met, and gathered for weekly community meetings where I internalized that we can actually do this shit. A bathhouse where I'd traced the body of a lover I no longer hear from, and the adjacent woods where we spent our first moments alone. A kitchen that taught me more than I could've imagined about empathetic joy, learning how to know and appreciate the people working next to me. A wood-frame barn I helped raise and plaster, the only sustainably-built structure I've ever laid my hands on. The pond in which we drowned a host of inhibitions, and the library that provided the inspiration for my own. All gone. Never to return.

It was empty that last morning. Ben was serving as groundskeeper since the programs had been canceled, and had offered us the opportunity to sleep there rather than the floor of the anarchist labor hall in Barre. I couldn't escape the thought that when we pulled out of the parking lot, it would never come back. This place that represented probably the most intense moments of healing and redemption that I've ever known would never come back. This place that represented the possibility of so many things, this place where I'd watched people organically draw out each other's best selves would never come back. This place that gave breath to the possibility of an integrated radical intellectual life would never come back. There was definitely something in me that felt if I just didn't leave, it wouldn't have to end. And while I don't often cry over much of anything, I felt that tense, burning in my gut and temples that would otherwise set the process in motion.

Murray, I didn't know you well. And you kinda pissed me off that last time I was at your place. I'd actually brought a copy of The Ecology of Freedom with me, to have you sign for me, but by the time you'd finished talking, I was so put off by your bitterness and your badly veiled, desperate insecurity that I didn't bother. It was miserable. I didn't even feel guilty when Brooke gave me shit afterward, for putting my head down on my arms and nearly falling asleep. You were a shell of whoever produced the work that still routinely speaks through me, that guy was nowhere to be found.

And now all possibility of catching a glimpse of him is gone. Never to return.

And I'm having a really hard time absorbing that, brother. Mostly, I'm aware of how your passion and steadfastness spoke through the Institute, and what that's written on me. And I'm really fucking sorry I never fully realized it, or thanked you for it. I'm really sorry you left us without hearing me say it, Murray. It was a beautiful and sorely understated gift to us all, and it saved my fucking life. You deserve far more for that than your 85 years could've probably afforded. And I'm sorry I never told you that.

Safe travels.

"To speak of ‘limits to growth’ under a capitalistic market economy is as meaningless as to speak of limits of warfare under a warrior society. The moral pieties, that are voiced today by many well-meaning environmentalists, are as naive as the moral pieties of multinationals are manipulative. Capitalism can no more be ‘persuaded’ to limit growth than a human being can be ‘persuaded’ to stop breathing. Attempts to ‘green’ capitalism, to make it ‘ecological’, are doomed by the very nature of the system as a system of endless growth.” - M. B.

The Bridges of Washington County

Another installment for Mr. Sommers (or anyone interested in images)...

This is my buddy, Poopers. He and I are chillin' on Barre Street this weekend, while his daddy's out of town. You might notice that his ears are sort of blunted. Years ago, Poopers decided he was done with living at home. Problem is, he lives in Vermont. And during the winter, it ain't warm here. He came home with the tips of his ears frostbitten, they later broke off. Any of you had your earlobes freeze off? Didn't think so. Poopers is a straight up gangsta.



I'm officially whittling away 4hr shifts at Montpelier's Black Sheep Books, come by and see me. This is of course like putting a smackhead behind the counter at a pharmacy.


Amen.





High of 69F today. I'm rockin jeans and a zipup hoodie, early afternoon. Holy crap.

Vertigo, anyone?

I left my flat, I left my friends.
I left my job, it was bound to be this way.
And as I leave the ground, I start to think about
Everything you made me say.

Oh, things will never be the same again.

-R. Kellerman


Does anyone remember the final scene of The Neverending Story? It's actually the only part of the movie I've seen, to tell the truth. I must've been like 8, maybe younger. Yeah I know, I know. You're already ripping your hair out, screaming, "You've never seen that movie?!! What?! C'mon!" Go ahead, get it out of your system. At that age, I think was farming out a proper working class mullet, tearing up the neighborhood on a BMX with a card in the spokes and DIY cardboard vanity plate that said "BADASS", with my older cousin's metalhead boyfriend schooling me on the genius of Slayer. So, yeah. I didn't have time for typical kid shit. Deal with it.

Increasingly, I find that scene peeking out in the back of my mind; the sort of paradox of having nothing but this grain of sand left; this sole sacred remnant, upon which wishes are made toward -- not a resurrection -- but an entirely new totality. I'm quite aware of how dramatic that sounds, so keep it in your pants (I'm going somewhere with this).

Truth is, my place of residence is fairly stable; it's not going anywhere, and the rent isn't going up any time soon (nor is anything about living there prohibitive enough for me to keep an eye on the For Rent ads in Ward One). I'm more or less entirely in the driver's seat, vis a vis my economic mobility; I'm self-employed, in a line of work in which each incremental increase in actual work volume inheres an exponential increase in income. No one's really standing in my way, waving employee evals or updated (and invariably expanded) job descriptions. Mayor Williams has taken advantage of the lack of accountability that comes with a final term to structurally outfit the city on a fast track toward ethnic cleansing, and well... making the city uninhabitable for families; which (while appalling and catastrophic for anyone with a pulse) inevitably means a massive influx of high-income, childless residents... Many of whom have dogs, and jobs that will require them to hire the likes of yours truly to walk them.

So, when the question of "what next?" comes up, it's never really guided by any looming imperative to overcome this or that limitation or obstacle, or some externally-imposed frame of reference; it's almost entirely a question with few boundaries, of a wholly creative character. What can you dream up, guy?

Well, great, right?

To some extent, yes. Seager and I launching this worker-run dogwalking agency is one manifestation of that. There are a few legal and administrative hoops we have to jump through, and similar guardrails we have to loosely adhere to. But beyond that, the creative landscape is pretty broad. Writing bylaws for the agency actually means thinking structurally about how to make a collectively-owned and operated enterprise function as more than an abstraction or speculation. It's an extraordinary privilege to be in that position; making something ideal manifest. It's a process of routinely saying "Can we do that? Yeah, we can do that." Despite being bound up in largely mundane details, it's still a radical departure from virtually any decisionmaking scenario I've ever been a part of; where my mere desires are the determining factor of a given decision. It's difficult to even convey, in text.

Otherwise, it's fucking terrifying. Maybe not the business itself, but the parameters in which that takes place. Flawed as the structure of my past life might've been, it was familiar, and at least seemed intuitively reparable/salvagable much of the time. I've considered the possibility that I'm averse to taking more ownership of my own decisions, and I don't really think that quite describes it. In fact, I can say for a fact that my emotional health has improved considerably (in my work, activist projects, and spiritual life) due entirely to the increased independence and ownership I now enjoy.

Nearest I can tell, what I can't seem to adjust to is that I can utter the words "Things will never be the same again.", and feel the full weight of what's irrecoverable in all of this; feel the wholesale departure at work. Things I woke up to each day that were simply given, things that served some navigational function in my life... gone, never to return. Whatever is to emerge in their stead must be created from scratch. There seems even no real recourse to merely aspiring to prefabricated markers. It's a matter of wishing on the last remnant I seem to constitute, cultivating something altogether other and likely thus far unimagined.

And that prospect strikes me, some days, as nothing short of herculean.

Attempting to trick chaos into
Something beautiful. It's what I live for.
It's magic. Magic.
-Waxwing

I'd like to dedicate this one to the man with three Chrome bags...

So, Sommers asked for lots of photos. Here's the first batch.

This is the condo I'm living in for the next two months. There are five of us there (one for each bedroom), and our nextdoor neighbor ran the Vermont leg of Bush's last presidental campaign. I smell a prank war... Or a steel-cage death match.



This is the view from the back of the place, hinted at in the first photo.



Where the magic happens.



Light, summer reading.



Sore as I found myself this morning, I gathered I couldn't possibly fare better crawling the Main Street hill, so I opted to walk into town. On foot, the route involves a brief shimmy through the woods, and a stroll through a rather old graveyard.













Don't hurt yourself, Scott.

Out of the oven, and into... A mild high of low 70's

Prologue
I wish I could say that I started my trip to Montpelier in keeping with the sort of pacific theme I'd staked out for the trip as a whole. United Airlines had other ideas.

If you've checked in for a flight recently, you've noticed the little ushers they pay to stand around and point out the obvious to you. Well, those overpaid twits watched me stand in the check-in line for well over 40 minutes, with an obvious bike box sitting in my little push cart. I was the only person in the entire line with an oversized item, I had to have stood out like a sore thumb. I still haven't figured out why, but they waited until I was the next passenger to be called to the counter to tell me that I couldn't check something that big at that counter, and that I'd instead have to haul it around to the backside of the ticketing area, to "counter number 7."

Counter number 7 was, in fact, designated for international flights. And the queueing area was absolutely empty. So, I strolled up and explained my situation to the guy working there, only to have him A] Tell me he was baffled as to why they wouldn't check me in at the previous counter and B] That I had just missed the 45min cutoff for checking bags. In other words, I couldn't get on the flight, unless I just ditched my luggage. The next flight? FIVE FUCKING HOURS LATER. Not having any other options, I resigned myself to it and told him to go ahead and move me to the next flight, to which he responded "Oh, and they did tell you about the $85 fee for checking the bike, right?". I was ready to go fucking postal. No shit. "So, what you're telling me is that, not only do I have to hang out in this abysmal airport for the next five hours, but I have to pay you people for the coveted privilege of wasting those 5 hours of my life, at a rate of nearly $20 per hour?".

"Um, yes. I'm really sorry, sir."

One would think that given their fuckup, they'd have waived that fee. Of course not. That's ok. I'm a master of polemic at this point, and I've got two whole months to do nothing but craft the most pointed, fire-breathing letter to United's customer relations department. In fact, I'm almost positive that's precisely what the Langdon Street Cafe set out to create a space for, when they opened.


The Crawl
The following morning, I woke up at something like 8am, which is more or less standard for me at home. Of course, at home, my life moves at an altogether other speed, and often functions best when I'm up and at it early. At that hour, KCRW's webcast is still runnning the morning news programs from the BBC, and it's an ideal time to tend to mundane little tasks around the house and read the news before work obligations begin to kick in. Here, there are virtually no work obligations. In fact, there's really no schedule to speak of. And I'd begun to figure out that if I don't pace myself here, I'm going to find myself nickle and diming my money away on shit I don't need, in order to entertain myself.

So, back to sleep I went. Around 11am, I woke back up, and figured it a more reasonable time to begin my day. After chatting with one of my new "housemates", and showering, I took a deep breath and committed myself to the steep crawl down into the center of town.

Now, at home, hills rarely factor into my daily plotting as a significant prohibition or consideration. For the year before I moved to Capitol Hill, I'd crawl down 16th just about every day. The day before I left DC, I spun my way from northern Bethesda all the way down to the east end of Capitol Hill. I'd like to think I'm alright with these things. Well folks, yesterday, on the outskirts of Montpelier, VT... I just might've met my match (Gucci BMX chain notwithstanding).

For those uninitiated, bikes built up with a fixed gear don't coast. Ever. Moreover, the majority of the braking process involves resisting the forward motion of the pedals (imagine stopping a unicycle). Short of a front brake, the entirety of the process of controlling speed works this way, and relies entirely on the rider bidding sheer muscular strength against such forces as (oh...) gravity, to regulate speed.

Well, the Main Street hill into downtown Montpelier nearly killed me, kids. It's essentially a mile-long downward crawl, and when I say downward crawl, I don't mean Connecticut Ave., or even Mass. Ave. This shit is not a joke. Imagine crawling down Cleveland Ave. for a full mile, with no space to retreat from cars.

I'm quite proud to say that I fared alright up to the point at which the hill pulls a tight 180 at its steepest point. This leaves one heading into a straightaway decline with more momentum than anyone would really want to have. Traversing is off the table, unless one wants to tango with oncoming cars. About ten yards out of the turn, I realized that -- fight as I may -- (before reaching a flatter area, anyway) I was not going to make the bike go any slower, and at the same time, I was moving too fast to swing off the road to a less trafficked neighborhood street (a la runaway truck ramps). Skidding at this speed would've likely pulled my right cleat out of the clip; a possibility so disastrous I won't even get into it. Skipping probably risked the same, and even had it not, would've required wiggle room for keeping control that this one-lane scenario wasn't about to afford me. I'm sterilizing the description considerably, by the way. My inner monologue was more like "My fate is officially in the hands of some higher power."

Now, granted... Any seasoned commuting cyclist will tell you that probably 40% of what they wager on is a knowledge of the roads they're traveling. You can relax a bit in otherwise demanding stretches, if you know that conditions ahead will put control back squarely in your camp. I knew nothing of this commute, really. Unfortunately, I didn't really have any option but to dive straight in, as it's the only way into town. And my ignorance of the route probably contributed significantly too the danger in which I found myself.

Fighting (quite literally) with every muscle I could coax into the enterprise, I pulled the bike decidedly back into control as the incline eased up some. By the time I passed the Middle School, I was golden. I was also pretty sure that I was doing backflips inside my own skin, and it took 20 minutes of spinning around downtown to get my nerves under control. By the time I clipped out in front of the co-op, my quads and calves were spasming like I was suffering from some sort of dystrophy, and my arms felt like they were on fire, all the way up through my deltoids.

As the sun set last night, I tightened my shoes, flipped on the blinky, and began the climb back home. Having done the crawl in, I knew well what I was up against, and I'm pleasantly surprised to report that I only walked about 100 yards of it (mostly that goddamn 180), and pulled it through to home -- even when the sky opened up on me in the home stretch. Of course, I woke up this morning feeling like someone had cut my calves, thighs, and ass cheeks open and inserted scuba weights before sewing them back up. Just stepping over the edge of the tub, to get into the shower, was a fairly painful undertaking.

A morning lap session at the pool adjacent to the condo, and a front brake seem to be in order, should I like to ease my way into the demands of my daily routine, here.

How we roll, in the District.

When Bassam's not busy reassuring me that ass-fucking is, indeed, still funny... He's mucking up the cutting floor for the Rev.




And when Noura's got a few moments free from her full-time gig sticking it to The Man... She's telling Bill O'Reilly to take a flying fuck.

Ghosting.

We can go and walk in the morning.
We don't need streetlights, just a new start.
Not paralyzed by appearances, with big ideas
And just way too smart to walk around
On the surface, when there's an ocean
Just beneath its blue-green smile.
-R. Votolato


There was a time when I was perpetually gone or going. If I were back from a tour, I was booking flights for the next. A significant portion of my internal rhythm was regulated by passing through airports, almost to the point of dependence. Newark. Los Angeles. Honolulu. Seattle-Tacoma. Minneapolis. Atlanta. Buenos Aires. Gothenburg. Copenhagen. Zurich. London. Frankfurt. Hamburg. Tel Aviv. Stockholm. Bologna. None of which accounts for the now countless jaunts across this country that I made by ground. There were times I'd come home from a month abroad, only to get up the next day and get in a van, or onto yet another plane to skip town for another month, or six weeks, or two months.

Learning to sleep in vans, venues, and terminal gates, I allowed the notion of home as a place that implies stable responsibilities or a command of my attention to slip away, buried by boarding calls and passing cars. It wasn't that I disliked my life enough to neglect or abandon it. Probably more realistically, there were demons with which I was locked in a death-match waiting game. The Whisper, as Cassie called it, and its handful of architects. Their only advantage was their crippling gaze, and the cowardice of knowing onlookers. My only advantage was the fact that the Earth happens to be round, and one can only cast a gaze so far. Short of counting on less cowardly onlookers (or lovers), the Atlantic was usually of sufficient width to dull the blow.

In hindsight, it's just as likely that some part of me was putting off writing certain final chapters, by way of absence. No amount of humility, patience or devotion was going to keep that book from closing; life tends to get in the way of whether or not such things matter (and sorry to ruin the story for you kids, but your peers will exact precisely zero to safeguard or reward such sentiments in the interests of a more reasonable set of possibilities for us all). One embraces and honors such things for the sake of cringing a little less at the sight of one's own reflection, and should count on little more.

Ultimately, the ink simply ran out. There was no real climax, no resolution, no conclusion. I'd slowed down enough to appreciate what awaited me when I'd run my course with life as transit. And in the face of routinely watching my most challenging and spiritually demanding moments evaporate into thin air, I simply ran out of things to say (or at least the energy to say them)... and then quietly closed the door on what little I'd left of home, behind me.

The irony, of course, is that eclipsing the last vestiges of "home" had no geographic implications. I'd cultivated a material framework firmly grounded in the District, and for that matter, (despite years spent spilling across the Western Hemisphere and beyond) knew very little else. My relationship with home became not unlike a relationship with a lover suffering from severe memory loss; spinning through my daily commutes, I could still navigate the city's contours like tracing over details of a familiar body... But whatever had once fired within that shell was nowhere to be found. Remaining present meant committing to learning about this new person inhabiting that body.

Committing to some other geography was more time than I was really willing to give of my remaining 60 or so years, and the last time she cast her lot with performing rather cheap mourning rituals over my departure (to an audience all too invested in the mythology sustained by these widely publicized bits of theater), I forfeit my affection for the city that, until recently, she'd only ever reluctantly called home. One cannot be what one was. And I'd already been that guy, ceding some portion of a history I'd yet to see handled honestly or responsibly (to staggering effect).

A tension has emerged since, which now dominates my inner monologue; one in which I'm failing to decide whether the nearly two years that have followed should be characterized by this shell of material pursuits with which I've busied myself (presumably in preparation for the day something will catch and the gears will stop spinning aimlessly), or whether this is - in fact - who I am. My hostility toward metaphysics being what it is, I'm not wed to the idea that there's anything significantly profound to be mined from my day to day trajectory. Maybe there isn't any compelling justification or inspiration for getting up and passing each day. Maybe it's just something that happens, irrespective of larger narratives. And just as well, maybe not.

It occurred to me at some point that I have perhaps been seduced by yet another waiting game - one in which I continue to get up each day, continue to fulfill responsibilities and commitments, continue to safeguard my material and emotional stability... But only in waiting, betraying any fidelity to movement with L'Altra of motion. Not entirely unlike the hours whittled away in Newark. And Los Angeles. And Honolulu. And Seattle-Tacoma. And Minneapolis. And Atlanta. And Buenos Aires. And Gothenburg. And Copenhagen. And Zurich. And London. And Frankfurt. And Hamburg. And Tel Aviv. And Stockholm. And Bologna.

So, I've left. Again. Trading in lucrative self-employment and a two-storey apartment for a modest basement room in a hilltop condo, and a keen lack of routines with which to bury the passing of the present. Invariably, I'll return, but I needed to wrest myself from the inertia of rising and resting, a stranger to what emerges between the two.

The waiting game can kiss my ass.

Watching the Landlord Get Hauled off in Cuffs

After the bike action Friday, I'd sort of allowed myself to exhale. Two actions in one week. It seemed reasonable that I could now focus on the pile of scattered tasks I needed knock out before heading to Vermont. My mom's birthday is Friday, and I still need to get that in order. The insurance settlement still looms. My kitten needs to be spayed before I leave. I have IAS work I need to get wrapped up. It wouldn't hurt to clean the house top to bottom before turning it over to Seager. There's an NCOR meeting Wednesday. I've been trying to catch up with friends one last time. The bike has to be broken down and boxed for the flight, and I need to pack.

But then Israel decided to bomb an apartment complex, killing over 50 people (well over half, children), using US-supplied weapons (duh). Well, that did it. Every task I'd committed to went out the fucking window. Thanks, guys.

And so it went. Sunday evening was a blur of piecing together a press release, until I closed the laptop at 1am, bleery-eyed. Monday morning would see the beginning of an escalatory campaign of direct action and civil disobedience here in the District, to complement the already unfolding series of community forums and evening vigils. Despite working on 24hrs notice, much to my surprise, we made something happen; something that felt like a reasonable approximation of what we'd set out to do.


Sitting in in the little courtyard outside the GWU Hospital, I watched Bassam hand the phone to Mark. "It's the cops, they want to know what we're doing." The conversation seemed pretty standard. There are actions like this every day in the District, and it's part of the routine for certain police agencies. To some extent, they're expected to allow these sorts of things to unfold with little drama, to keep up appearances about the elasticity of american democracy and yadda yadda. Of course, anyone who's ever substantively tested said elasticity has likely enjoyed the lecture one gets from US Marshalls in Central Holding -- the one where they point out the lack of cameras in the facility, noting "We don't do that PC shit, here." This however, wasn't to be anything dramatic, merely the hint that there were bodies prepared to fall on the gears if this shit didn't let up quick. I watched, as Mark jotted down the name of the voice on the other end... Agent Smith. Winking at Bassam, I whispered (to Mark), "Ask him if I should take the red pill, or the blue pill." Mark merely waved us off to keep our laughing from bleeding into the conversation. Bassam then began handing out mouth-freshening gum, saying that any randy cellmates might be a little genlter "if you smell nice."

DC's finest vegan establishment sits half a block off of the infamous K Street - our version of Wall Street, and the corridor whose namesake became a euphemism for the unholy trinity of Neo-Cons, Ambramoff, and the backdoor deals the fundamentalist rightwing of the midwest and southeast would rather not know about... Much of which seems to be steadily unraveling (mostly at the feet of Tom Delay), though the mainstream press has seemingly moved on to some extent. As I pocketed my change from breakfast, I turned to hear Bassam speaking in Arabic and waving his left hand around at a white guy from a film team, who'd come to document the action. "I'm converting him, so that we have the full spectrum." I squinted, to indicate my confusion. "We've got a Jew, a Christian, two Shia, and we needed a Sunni. So, I converted him." Still laughing, the cameraman asked, "Don't I need to say There is no god but Allah in Arabic or something?" Bassam shrugged it off. "Nah, it's cool."

Then he got serious for a sec. "Guys, no joke. I know I say a lot of shit, and you're going to hear this and blow it off, Bassam's joking around again - but I'm not kidding right now: I'm ready for whatever today - arrest, beatings, torture, prison rape. It's all good. But I swear to you, if there are any dogs, I will scream like a little girl. No kidding around. I'll lose it." A few years ago, I hosted a meeting at my old house in Mt. Pleasant. Bassam was taking notes on a laptop when my cat nonchalantly strolled in to see what everyone was up to. Abruptly, everything stopped as Bassam clapped the laptop shut against his chest, shot his chair out from behind him, and backed into a corner asking, "What is that?! Is that a cat?!!" I was floored. Rami was on the verge of rupturing an organ, tears streaming down his face, laughing on the other side of the room. I've never asked how or why, but the guy seriously loses his shit over domesticated animals. I feel blessed to have witnessed it firsthand, actually.

The crowd outside the State Department swelled slowly but surely, mostly Arab press mingling with activists and community folks, getting interviews here and there. Some journalists showed up as activists, a gesture I've only rarely encountered otherwise. The heat was insane. I worried that little kids who'd shown up might be in some real danger, but they never really seemed to slow down. Rami's kid was all over the place, and even (quite boldly, for a 3 year old) raced past a cop to hug his father as he stood blocking the entrance. By 1pm, the cops rather unceremoniously flex-cuffed the four who'd been blocking the driveway at the main entrance, and walked them to a waiting paddy wagon. By that time, rather pointed and passionate calls had been cast through a megaphone, mainstream press was circling the crowd, and despite the pulverizing heat, a significant number of onlookers had gathered -- tourists and lunching staffers alike.

The mechanics of actions has kinda dulled on me in the way the rote tasks of a job do for most people. There are aspects of the process in which I feel creatively engaged, and there's a real elation in seeing that through. But at the end of the day, their significance is usually eclipsed by the relationships I've had the privilege of building, the teaching moments that have passed between myself and others, and manner in which our most human qualities (namely our humor) consistently refuse to stand down for some stoic, soulless, vapid notion of what struggle looks or feels like. What goes down in the interstices is ultimately what sustains this sort of thing. Even if there's no tangible "success" to speak of on this or any other horizon, if I'm going to go down... Goddammit, I'm going down with my people, the people who've made me matter. More importantly, the people who've made me laugh.

Derrida, on signifier and the signified in "Self-Defense"

Note: Some of what's below is an account of events a week past. I had trouble uploading photos for a day or so, and thereafter I was tied up with things of the non-blog variety. Apologies for the lag.

So, following the collision and police report last Tuesday (the physical aftermath of which has been photo-documented in the previous post), Seager and I headed up to Bethesda to hit up the only Army surplus store we know of in the area. He wanted a pair of shorts he hadn't cut from pants, and I needed a pair of black Dickies to round out my "funeral" getup for the procession we'd organized to the Israeli Embassy. Mark had duct-taped a gauze wrap around my entire lower abdomen and back, to close off the glass wounds and keep me from bleeding into my clothes any further, as I was absolutely not going to let some ass-hat motorist keep me out of the game.

We parked the car he'd borrowed from his uncle near the convergence point for the procession, and changed into our dress clothes on the sidewalk (partly obscured by the car doors). Unifored Secret Service rolled by, but surprisingly didn't think anything of the barefoot white kid with no pants, opposite the UDC tennis courts. Seager opted to suit up in the rear of the vehicle, and managed to lock himself in. He waited no longer than my opening his door to fart audibly. I later pondered the potential guffaw I'd foregone by not promptly shutting him back in.

By the time we'd walked two blocks, Seager noticed I'd bled a solid red horizontal line into the lower part of my shirt. Apparently, the guaze and bandaging had reached capacity. When we grabbed our coffin, I had him let me take the front, to obscure the stain. I could overhear Lauren commenting to him that she was so proud I'd "finally become a woman."

The procession was incredible (I highly recommend viewing the video footage at the link above). Dizzyingly diverse turnout, beautiful imagery, vividly confrontational to all observers without being threatening, and virtually bulletproof from the usual racist characterizations lobbed at any gathering with a significant number of Arabs. Of all the action ideas I've ever pulled out of my ass in a 5-minute strategy meeting, this was by far the most seamless and powerful -- almost entirely due to legwork and outreach that I had exactly zero to do with. People really stepped up and made shit happen in a way I'm not sure I've experienced in prior organizing.





The media hade a field day with it, as well (international media especially). The Washington Post ran a particularly sympathetic piece, and the reliably borderline-fascist, looney Washington Times even ran something (somewhat less helpful). My friend Noura even wound up invited to duke it out on the O'Reilly Factor, accepted the invitation, and by at least one account handed O'Reilly his ass.

By the end, my shirt, slacks, and boxer briefs were saturated with blood, and I found my way to the ER, where I was told (were it not for the staff being absolutely slammed) I'd have been checked in as a "trauma." I'd walked in holding my wadded-up dress shirt against my lower back to stop the bleeding, and combined with my hunched-over hobble, I seemed to have given the the security guard the impression that I was experiencing some sort of sodomy-related injury. Inspired, I text-messaged Seager from my little ER room, saying: My undies look like a buggering gone wrong. To which he wrote back: Or very, very right.

And thus concluded yet another installment of the Seager-Stephens Ethically Questionable Humor Show, rounding out an otherwise less-than-comical day.



The next morning, I had my bike examined for damage. My front wheel was done for, the fork on my Kogswell was done for, and I wound up spending a good day or two scrambling to get a bike pieced together that I could use for the protest ride to the Israeli Embassy that I'd talked everyone into doing for Friday. Elliott (being his usual angel of a self) got me squared away just in time. The KHS frame was rebuilt, with a new substitute front wheel, and I joined the 20 or so folks who congregated in Dupont Circle at the tail end of rush hour.

In years past, I was fairly regular in Critical Mass rides, and quite enjoyed them. But in recent years, the rides had become less diverse, and more and more grew to resemble a circus sideshow of folks who -- were it not for them discovering the shallow refuge of a rather narrow "anarchism" -- would've likely gone straight to the carnie temp agency. The authentication of a given lifestyle aesthetic had taken the reins and displaced what of the activity could be translated into something broadly legible. It felt less like an opportunity to communicate something, and more a means of further marginalizing an already relatively marginal trend along with its perfectly reasonable demands/politics.

This ride, while not being a Critical Mass itself, was populated largely by really smart, sophisticated, and genuinely sweet folks. It's always one thing to feel some intellectual resonance with someone. It's another to collaboratively set bodies in motion and tangibly make something manifest; to create movement from that resonance; without jettisoning ethical and intellectual rigor in favor of a lifestyle clubhouse. For months, I've been conversing with a number of the folks who turned out, discussing political geography, behaviors that give space to difference, commitments that become our lives rather than dulling critical examination. Those conversations, while heartening, were still merely conversations. Pedaling up Connecticut Ave., I felt like we'd begun to put our bodies into making that critical space physical.

For those keeping count...

So, many of you know that in mid-May, my love of books and bikes collided at 8th and Pennsylvania SE, sending me over the bars of my bike, bringing the rear of the bike with me... Leaving me with a fractured collar bone and some rather dramatic road rash and tissue damage around my hip.

Many of you also know that about 6 weeks later, after being back on my bike for about a week, a van to my left turned right within 10ft. of signaling, leaving me no place to go. I pushed off its sidedoor and then tucked and rolled. The verdict: A sprained wrist, and some really nasty road rash on my knees and right shoulder (along with 30min of mild amnesia).

And now...

At the intersection of 3rd and E St. NE Tuesday, an oncoming car made a left turn in front of me, with no signal. I was kinda doomed from the outset. I yanked the bike right, to turn with her and avoid her, but to no avail. Within a split second, I knew we were going to meet. So, I opted to throw the fattiest, least vulnerable piece of myself at the car and hope for the best.

When my lower back met the rear of the passenger side, the window immediately blasted out from behind me, reversing my trajectory somewhat, and rolling me with the bike off the back foot or so of the car, into the street.

Within the next hour, the cops showed up and took a report, my front tire burst from the tension of a bent rim (my stem ripped out as soon as the bike made contact with the ground), a client of mine walked the 6 blocks from her office to clean out the cuts in my lower back, I bled a solid red into the white material that Dickies puts on the inside of the waistband of its work shorts, and I caught a ride home with my bike in tow.

The cop told me the police report would be available Friday. By 8am Wednesday, personal injury lawyers in the area had read it, determined it to be a slam dunk, and were lighting up my cell phone (I still haven't seen it). There's more to the story, but it'll have to come later.

Taking Refuge, Pt. 1

As a practicioner of the Dharma (Buddhism being a term assigned from the outside; one that has left me cringing more and more, the longer I spend reflecting on the practice), one generally takes on a few basic, routine practices. One, of course, is meditation; an element to which I'll return in the next entry. Another is what is called taking refuge. There are three refuges: The Buddha, The Dharma, and The Sangha. It all sounds a lot more metaphysically loaded than it really is, ultimately, and nearest I can tell, in keeping with other spiritual traditions, many have fixated on the most shallow aspects of these concepts, toward equally shallow ends.

Fortunately, there is quite an anti-authoritarian thread running through the Dharma. The historical Buddha (a regular guy who actually lived, and actually died - from eating bad pork, no less - just like you or I) seems to have given a number of sermons in which he challenged his listeners and monks not to adopt any belief or any practice merely at his recommendation. An individual's ability to empirically weigh evidence and directly experience any given "truth" was integral to the tradition, pretty much from the get-go. The Buddha often referred to the Dharma as a raft; a raft serving the exclusive function of getting one from one side of a river to the other. If said raft does not adequately serve that purpose, it should be abandoned. It's no different for the Dharma. On his deathbed, the Buddha refused to appoint a successor, and encouraged his followers to be "a light unto [themselves]."

In that spirit, I've been grappling some, as of late, with what taking refuge in the Sangha means (for me). The Sangha refered (initially) to the community of monks and nuns in a given community; taking refuge therein presumably meant seeking spiritual guidance, empathy, compassion, etc. from engaged community (in the form of a monastic order). Clearly, the laity has taken some creative license with that over the years, and rightly so. As one columnist noted in the latest issue of Tricycle (in a column challenging the Dharma's default to monogamy in sexual relationships), it makes little sense for any of us to be heeding sexual prescriptions from monastic adherents whose sexual experience is limited or non-existent (at best).

But it doesn't really change that there is something to the notion that great insights, growth, challenge, and comfort are to be found in community. There is something to be said for what we earn from humbling ourselves in the presence of those we trust, and accepting that we may not know exactly what to do, or how to resolve this or that; accepting that we're desperate, fallible... even mortal. Or maybe just that the world is bigger than any one of us. There's something to that.

The attacks on Lebanon have been an internal nightmare for me. When I came back from the West Bank three years ago, I staggered in the helplessness that consumed me during my stay for some months. And it wasn't really something I could even describe, much less talk about, with friends. A few of my Palestinian friends were acquainted enough with the trajectory one observes in the Territories that I could kinda exhale in conversations with them, but something about that felt inappropriate at times; given their own trauma, their own families, etc. what obligation did they have to burden themselves with this white boy's realization that history had swallowed him and everything that (up to his arrival in Tel Aviv) had kept him hopeful?

Edward Said's 1993 Reith Lectures on the BBC provide an unlikely analogy for the mechanisms by which I've perhaps coped with the knowledge I cannot undo:

The exile... exists in a median state, neither completely at one with the new setting, nor fully disemcumbered of the old, beset with half-involvements and half-detachments, nostalgic and sentimental on one level, an adept mimic or a secret outcast on another.

It seems quite clear that a mere example (The Buddha) and a personal practice (The Dharma) are, on their own, woefully inadequate in the face of exile - be that exile literal, or manifest in finding oneself permanently cut off from the stability of one's assumptions and/or naivete. Going it alone (regardless of examples or practices) is woefully inadequate when it's quite possible there are no answers, no solutions (to speak nothing of easy answers). Right now, some half a million people are internally displaced in Lebanon. Hundreds are already dead. And the weapons that made it all possible were financed, manufactured, and provided on my dime. Sure, we've all acknowledged that, in the abstract. It's another sport entirely to know exactly what that looks like, and exactly what it means when the US Ambassador to the UN goes on record with the same colonialist, apartheid logic that animated virtually every Israeli you ever met; the logic that crushed you, silenced you, and terrified you every time you encountered it three years ago.

So... Rami, Zein, Noura, Jake, Jamilah, Jeff, Mark, Ehmad, Matt, Mary Kate...Thanks for allowing me some refuge in being able to struggle alongside you. And to Hugh, thanks for having the heart to speak of struggling with the "unconscionable", and giving that space in your practice alongside the immanent struggles of your loved ones.

Between waking and finding my way to meditation in Woodley Park this morning, I found my way to the west side of Capitol Hill, hoping to greet John Bolton before his appearance on Fox News, to confront him for stopping just shy of publicly declaring that brown bodies don't matter. We didn't meet, but the voices of a handful of sane people reverberated off the facade of the Fox News building during his visit. Stay tuned.








For those interested, Anthony Shadid's reporting (in The Washington Post) from Lebanon has been a real bright spot in mainstream news coverage. His most recent pieces are below.

No Haven in a City Paralyzed by Dread

Residents of Besieged City Feel 'Just Left Here to Die'

TYRE, Lebanon, July 20 -- The warning came...

Road Through a Landscape of Death

I also highly recommend bookmarking, and keeping up with Electronic Lebanon.

You're not the chosen one. I'm not the chosen one. We don't need anyone. Let's not choose anyone.

So, before I headed up to Boston, I cracked open SoulSeek for the first time in a few months, and trolled around looking for a couple records. Shockingly, I came across more than a few users holding the new Cursive album, Happy Hollow. And yeah, I totally downloaded it, even though it's got a street date of August 22nd.

And I gotta say, I was a fan of the band before, but HOLY FUCKING SHIT this record is good. As I noted to a few friends, someone kept Mike Mogis sober for the production of this record, cause he seems to have actually figured out how to make a band sound tight, for once. Much of what he's touched as a producer is the sort of thing you hear and think, "This probably sounds incredible....live.", but this sounds fucking flawless, and is helped along considerably by the band finding their way out of attempting to continously mine bad judgment and emotional paralysis for the sake of "art"; instead going straight for the jugular with classical American small-town fundamentalism. Meanwhile, there's a sarcasm and lightheartedness to it that even go so far as to produce (dare I say) dancey moments.

I rarely get excited about music anymore, unless someone I know personally is involved. But this record made me want to listen to music more often, and made me want to give a shit about what's being produced these days. Let's see if it lasts.

In other news... after flipping my KHS frame and bouncing it off the side of a van (both requiring ER visits, both within six weeks of each other), I opted to hang it up and rebuild the Kogswell frame, until ol' trusty can be confirmed as true, blasted, and re-painted. And by the looks of the Kogswell site, I might have in my posession a now quite limited frame; looks as though they've discontinued their single-speed/reverse-dropout model. Hm.

Anyhoo, I built it up with most of the components I'd built onto the KHS, plus a fucking fierce Connex BMX chain. Actually, it's two chains (for which I dropped a grand total of $120), due to BMX chains being sized for the shorter chaindrive of an actual BMX bike. As you can see below, this thing is freakin' apocalypse-proof.



This weekend, I'll be trading out the Bianchi Pista drops for a set of Nitto time trial bars, and shortly thereafter upgrading my rear tire to match the front. Ultimately, I'd like to build up a different wheelset for this bike, with a front brake for a lever I got years ago that mounts into the end of proper time trial bars. When they were still making this frame, Kogswell (for some reason entirely in conflict with commonsense aesthetics and weight considerations) brazed every conceiveable mount onto it. Front and rear rack mounts, two water bottle mounts, lugs, mounts for running a rear brake cable through the top-tube, etc. It's a lot of dead weight that makes for a less-than-ideal commuter. But it'd make for a perfect hauling bike -- getting gear to demos, getting a dish to a potluck intact, possibly even getting one of the cats to the vet.

For now, the idea is to have a sturdy, powerful, and reliable ride for my forthcoming two month working "vacay" in Montpelier, VT. I've secured a room in a 3BR "luxury condo" with several other anarchists, on the outer edge of the town, allegedly at the top of quite a hill. So, with less than three weeks to go, it seemed time to start getting shit together, rather than have my ride falling apart or blowing a chain while crawling down into town one morning.

Speaking of bike dorkdom, I've spent part of my weekend reading Travis Hugh Culley's The Immortal Class: Bike Messengers and the Cult of Human Power. Initially, I found it a bit silly and pretensious, but after the first chapter or so, I fell in love with it. I highly recommend it, even to folks who aren't particularly privy to courier culture, or even bike culture. It's a quite accessible and catchy read, and has a roundabout way of touching on some fairly serious subjects (both political and existential). I generally don't pick up stuff like this, but I'm glad I did. I'd frankly like to shake the guy's hand, and thank him.

In closing, there's a demo outside the White House tomorrow afternoon, regarding Israel's recent insistence on bombing half its neighbors into the Stone Age, over an explicitly military action, for which they've now sacrificed probably 150 civillian lives. Any of you local yokels are cordially invited to join us. We'll be meeting afterward, to begin strategizing further action around this, and it's fair to say that the DC Palestine-Solidarity community has stirred from its slumber over all this - a community I would argue has a great deal to offer folks interested in engaging, community-based, direct action, organizing with diverse folks who boast (gasp!) reasonable social skills and a healthy sense of humor. It's perhaps sad that it took this insanity to stir us all out of a dormant year or two, but it's not like you were doing anything exciting with your summer anyway [wink].

Nighty-night.